


Hurt, Comfort & Co.

by Veldeia



Category: Crusade, Doctor Who & Related Fandoms, Iron Man (Movies), Stargate SG-1
Genre: Breaking the Fourth Wall, Crossover, Doctor Whump, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Introspection, Metafiction, Whump Without Plot
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-05-31
Updated: 2009-05-31
Packaged: 2018-04-02 03:54:46
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,329
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4044928
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Veldeia/pseuds/Veldeia
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A tragicomedy in two acts. You can read this as a weird adventure with gratuitous whump and a completely cracked premise, or as a self-ironic meta-sort-of-thing in the form of fiction by a long-time h/c addict, or anything in-between. Told from the points of view of the Tenth Doctor and Jack Harkness.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Hurt, Comfort & Co.

**Author's Note:**

> As it happens, I first posted this story at my livejournal exactly six years ago (the day I'm actually posting this on AO3 being the 31st of May, 2015), but it's still perfectly topical, because I still find myself writing similar stuff.
> 
> **Warnings:** The fourth wall gets broken. Also, there's some navel-gazing by the author.

**I.**

It was one of _those_ days.

The Doctor was planning on having pizza for dinner, and not just any old pizza, but the real, original Pizza Margherita. He set the coordinates for Naples, June 1889, and hit the switch. That, of course, was the first big mistake.

After a very shaky fifteen minutes full of smoke and sparks, he picked himself up from the floor of the TARDIS, and scrambled to the console. The screen that should've showed his position was blank. No location in space nor time. That was strange. He had to be somewhere, after all. He couldn't be in the Vortex anymore, when the TARDIS was so still. He tried punching the screen, gently at first, then with more force, but still, no readings.

He opened the door, and the first thing he saw was the lifeless body of a man dressed in a very recognisable greatcoat. Great. That seemed like a good enough explanation for what had happened. 

"Oh, come on, Captain Harkness," the Doctor muttered, and sat down by his prone friend.

It took longer than he would've expected, several minutes, but eventually, Jack revived, with the usual huge gasp. He sat up - and the gasp turned into coughing. He turned away from the Doctor, and spat blood on the smooth white floor.

"Agh, that was a nasty one," Jack groaned once he was able to talk. He sat up again, stretching, grimacing in pain. The Doctor could hear the sickening crunches of bones snapping back into place. "Must've broken at least half my ribs, and my spine in more than one place."

"Ouch," the Doctor commented. "How did you manage that?" Taking his friend's suffering so lightly probably made him a cold, emotionless person, but it was hard to be sympathetic, when he was constantly aware of the deep wrongness of Jack's very existence.

"I have no idea, actually," Jack replied. "You had nothing to do with it, then?"

"Well, aside from it being my TARDIS that brought us here, because you caused her to panic..."

"I didn't!" Jack said defensively. "I never even saw the TARDIS."

"You didn't? I guess it's not entirely surprising, seeing as I was nowhere near Cardiff, but I can't think of any other explanation for ending up in an unknown location, and finding you dead right outside the door. What do you think happened?"

"Beats me. I was in the Hub, minding my own business, and the next thing I know, I crash to the ground here as if I've been falling for hundreds of feet."

"That's weird."

The Doctor looked around. The room they were in was about fifteen feet high, and not very big, smaller than the TARDIS console room. The ceiling, the walls and the floor were perfectly smooth and pure white. There was a doorway in one of the walls, not far from them.

"Any idea where we are?" Jack asked, taking in the surroundings as well.

"Unless something really strange has happened to 19th century Naples, not really. The TARDIS doesn't know, either. I guess we'd better find out." The Doctor stood up, and offered Jack his hand.

Jack managed to get to his feet, still looking literally like death warmed over, a couple of dozen times. "Yeah, let's do that," he agreed.

The next room seemed to be a garden or a greenhouse, all green, filled with palm trees and bushes and grasses and flowers - but what really caught the Doctor's attention was the unmoving figure lying on the ground. Without a second thought, he ran over to the person, Jack following right behind him in brisk steps.

This lifeless-looking man wasn't anyone familiar to the Doctor. He was in his late thirties or early forties, had brown hair that was slightly more well-behaved than the Doctor's, and was wearing glasses which, the Doctor thought, weren't quite as geeky as his. He was dressed in a green uniform of some sort, and had matching gear, including a handgun, although he didn't really look like a soldier. The patch on his sleeve had a symbol that looked like the Scandinavian letter Å.

"Doesn't seem to be breathing," Jack noted. "Dead?"

The Doctor placed two fingers on the man's neck, and found a thready pulse. "Not yet," he said.

"Well, then," Jack said, and bent closer to give the man rescue breathing - or a kiss, it was difficult to tell the difference with him.

After a while, Jack pulled away, and the man took a deep breath on his own. His eyelids were flickering. "Jack?" he mumbled.

"Yeah," Jack said.

The Doctor raised his eyebrows at Jack. "You know him?"

"I don't think so, and I think I'd remember a face as cute as that - but you can never be sure."

The man had opened his blue eyes, squinting at the two of them. "What happened? Who're you?" he asked, sounding breathless and strained, and just as American as Jack.

"Captain Jack Harkness, at your service. Do I know you?"

"Um, probably not," the man said. "Wrong Jack. I'm Daniel."

"And I'm the Doctor. Hello," the Doctor introduced himself.

"Hi. So, that's a name, not a title?"

"Yes."

"Just a coincidental phonetic similarity to the common noun, then?" Daniel asked, taking the Doctor by surprise. It was hardly the sort of question one would expect from someone who'd been dying half a minute ago.

"No, I'm _a_ doctor, too," he answered. "Kind of. So, how're you feeling?"

"Dazed but okay. I've had worse. Where am I? What happened?" he asked again, getting up on his elbows.

Jack helped him to sit up, and said, "To tell you the truth, we've no idea. How about you? Any thoughts?"

"We were just on our way home through the gate, and something went wrong. A malfunction of some sort. An energy surge must've knocked me out. But I don't get it - where's everyone else?" He was looking around, his brow furrowed. "And where's the stargate?"

"The what?" Jack asked.

"Chaapa'ai? Astria porta? Big round thing, made of stone." Daniel drew a circle in the air with his hands.

"Oh, a stargate!" the Doctor exclaimed, delighted. "A clever invention, goes through the Vortex too. Is that how you got here?"

"I thought it was, but I can't see it anywhere," Daniel said, clearly disturbed by that fact.

Now that the Doctor thought about it, he realised he couldn't see the doorway through which they had entered this room, either - and it didn't even look like a room anymore. Leaving Jack with Daniel, he leaped up and ran to where they'd come from, but there was no wall, no doorway, just more trees and bushes as far as the eye could see. They were in a jungle.

He returned to the others, and sat down on the ground, in shock. "The TARDIS," he said, feeling like someone had punched him in the gut. "We've lost her!"

"What the hell's going on here?" Jack groaned.

"I wish I knew! Look, there's a path over there," the Doctor motioned with his hand. "Which means there's someone or something living here, wherever here is. We need to find them. If we find them, we'll hopefully find the TARDIS, too."

They headed towards the path and along it, the Doctor leading the way, the two recently revived men following a few steps behind, supporting each other. The path went on for a few hundred yards, until they came across another wall with a doorway. Unlike the first one, this wasn't white, but made of golden-yellow stone, covered with writing which, to his annoyance, the Doctor couldn't read or even recognise.

"Hey, this looks familiar," Daniel said. "We'd better watch out for dinosaurs."

"Dinosaurs?" the Doctor repeated. "Brilliant!"

He stepped inside, into a temple-like hall, with several large pillars and a plenitude of carvings, not in unknown scripts, but in Egyptian hieroglyphs. To his disappointment, he couldn't see any dinosaurs about. Instead, curled up on the ground in the middle of the hall, was yet another lifeless-looking person.

"Well, this is starting to get ridiculous," the Doctor remarked, but dashed towards them anyway.

From afar, this prone man slightly resembled the Doctor's previous incarnation: he was wearing a black leather jacket, but it was long, more like a coat or even a gown, and he had less hair than the Doctor had had, the top of his head completely bald.

"Galen?" Daniel said behind the Doctor, voice full of disbelief.

"Who's gay?" Jack asked.

"Ja-ack!" the Doctor groaned.

"Sorry, couldn't help myself. So, you know him?" he asked Daniel.

"Sort of," Daniel answered. "But I can't understand how he can be here. He's from the future of an alternate reality!"

The Doctor crouched closer to the unconscious man - and jumped a little, when the man suddenly spoke up. "You must get away from here. It's not safe. You cannot help me." He sounded desperate, in pain, and British.

"You really think we're just going to abandon you?" Daniel said.

The man - Galen - made a feeble and uncoordinated-looking attempt at getting up, fell on the floor again, and settled for just staring at them, blinking hard and squinting, like he had serious trouble focusing his eyes. "Daniel Jackson? Fancy meeting you here."

"You wouldn't happen to know where 'here' is?" Jack asked hopefully.

"No, but I do know it's dangerous. Just go. Leave me," he said again.

"No chance," the Doctor announced. "We can deal with dangerous, and you're coming with us. What's wrong with you, anyway?"

"Someone has disabled my tech," Galen said, his tone making it clear that it was the most horrible thing imaginable.

"Your tech? You mean..." the Doctor gazed at him. He didn't seemed to be carrying any technology, although he probably had lots of pockets in that big black coat. He was clearly in a bad way - did he mean life-support tech? Was he a cyborg? There was something odd about him. Tech, tech - oh! Of course! "Tech! You're a technomage! But I thought you'd all gone away!"

Galen swallowed with obvious difficulty, coughed, and said, "Look who's talking, Time Lord."

"Good point," the Doctor admitted. "So, your tech. What could cause this?"

"A certain radio signal hitting a transceiver at the base of my spine," Galen answered.

"That's it? That's all?" the Doctor said incredulously. "But that's easy!"

He fished the sonic screwdriver from his pocket, and spent some time scanning the air around them. "Yup, there's a signal. Can't pinpoint the source, I'm afraid, but I can easily jam it. Just need to find the right spot."

He ran the sonic down along the technomage's back, transmitting a strong signal to counteract the disabling one. It was easy to notice when he'd found the transceiver. Galen gave a little jolt, as if he'd been electrocuted, and let out a relieved sigh. "That's better. Much better. Thank you." Galen stood up, leaning on a metallic staff he had picked up from the ground by his side.

The Doctor followed him, holding the sonic pointed at him, because without it, the harmful signal would instantly down him again. "Now, we really should get out of here, and hopefully away from the source of that transmission, since this is a little awkward," the Doctor said.

"There's no going back," Jack noted, pointing at where they'd come from.

A pair of huge double doors blocked the entrance, and the Doctor was prepared to bet they were deadlock sealed. Across from them, in the opposite wall, was an open doorway. They were being driven like cattle, and they had little choice but to play along.

Jack, Galen and the Doctor started walking, but Daniel lingered behind, staring at the inscriptions on the walls.

"Come on, Danny boy," Jack shouted.

"You're stealing another Jack's lines," Daniel commented without turning his head. "And the writing could give us a clue about where we are. Except that it doesn't make any sense."

The Doctor hadn't been paying much attention to the writing, so he turned to look now, and instantly saw what Daniel had meant. "That's odd."

"Yeah, it is. It's not proper Middle-Egyptian. It's full of mistakes, like it was put together by a second year Egyptology student," Daniel said.

"What does it say, then?" Jack asked.

"It's hard to translate with all those errors," Daniel told him. "Mostly seems to be stuff about death and pain and suffering."

"Abandon all hope ye who enter here?" Jack suggested.

"Something like that."

"It's an ancient Egyptian curse! Exciting, isn't it?" the Doctor said cheerfully.

"Except that it isn't ancient, nor Egyptian," Galen reminded him. "Let's move on."

The room beyond the doorway seemed dim, and as they stepped through it, they saw that it was because it was night. The doorway, which was actually an archway carved into a rock face, gave into a mountainous landscape under a dark, starry sky.

Jack stopped in the archway. "I'm not going to let this one close behind us," he declared.

As if the rock had heard his words, there was a deep rumbling sound, and the ground shook under their feet.

"Then again... Run!" Jack yelled.

They dashed forwards as rocks began to rain down on them, and managed to get into safety just as the entire passage collapsed into an impassable heap of boulders. All the rocks seemed dark - no sign of the light golden-yellow of the previous room, as if it had never been there at all.

"This can't be real!" Jack shouted, spreading his hands. "This has got to be an illusion of some sort!"

"It's not. I know illusions. I'm a professional in that field. This is real," Galen said firmly. He was standing straight, even though the Doctor was no longer jamming the signal. They must've left it behind, in that collapsed room.

"I'm hardly new to the weird and alien myself, but the geography of this place is insane," Jack said. "Huge things disappearing without a trace, or appearing from out of nowhere, daytime jungle turning into barren highlands at night..."

"Galen's right, though. It does feel real, and normal," the Doctor noted. As far as he could tell, there were no temporal anomalies of any sort.

"Look! Over there!" Daniel called out, gesturing at a large boulder, about a hundred feet from them. Leaning against it, sitting on the ground, was, of course, yet another unmoving man.

Daniel was already running towards him, pointing ahead with a torch, and the Doctor followed him. The surreal surroundings he could've understood, but finding a knocked out person in each new room, now, that was absurd.

The man was dressed in what looked like a wetsuit, which was strange, since there was no water in sight. He had dark hair and a goatee, and a face that the Doctor guessed Jack would appreciate. Actually, he heard Jack whistle at the sight.

"I'll be damned," Jack said. "It's Tony Stark!"

"Who?" the Doctor asked.

"Come on, Doctor, you must've heard of him! I mean, maybe not about Tony Stark, the most well-known playboy of 21st century Earth, but hey, he's Iron Man!"

"Oh!" the Doctor exclaimed. "Really? That's brilliant! A real superhero!"

By this time, they'd reached the man's side, and he answered the Doctor himself, peering at him with half-lidded eyes. "Yeah, brilliant," he said, his voice heavy with sarcasm. "Especially since I've got about two minutes left to live, and there's nothing you can do."

"Now, where have I heard that before?" the Doctor said, glancing at Galen.

Galen ignored him, staring intently at Tony. "Trust me, we can help you. You have two people named after healers here. So, what seems to be the problem?"

Tony let out an exasperated sigh. "The problem is this," he said, and brought his hand to his chest. There was a metallic, round thing there, which the Doctor had assumed to be a part of his clothes. Tony grabbed it, and pulled it out, revealing a disconcertingly deep, metal-lined hole underneath. He held out the device. "It's not working, and the only person who knows how to fix it - that's me, obviously - is about to go into cardiac arrest."

"Don't be so melodramatic," the Doctor told him, and reached to take the device from him. "Let's see. What's this, cold fusion? Ah, arc reactor technology! That's clever - very clever, really!"

"Yeah, I know," Tony said, his smug tone an odd contrast to the pained grimace on his face.

The Doctor poked at the device with his sonic screwdriver. It wasn't terribly complicated - all the more clever for that - and luckily, not difficult to repair. Except that even when he thought he had everything in order, nothing happened. It still wasn't doing anything. The Doctor glared at the device and shook it, annoyed.

Tony's breathing had grown shallow. "Told you. I'm never wrong," he panted. "Was nice meeting you." He closed his eyes and went limp, his head lolling to one side.

"Damn," Jack hissed, put his fingers on Tony's neck, frowned and shook his head. "No pulse."

"It's not too late yet," Galen said. "Give that to me." He grabbed the arc reactor from the Doctor, and held it between both hands. There was a blinding flash of light, and he opened his hands to reveal that the device was now glowing brightly.

"What did you do?" the Doctor asked.

"Oh, you know, a magician never reveals his tricks," Galen answered, and stooped over Tony to reconnect the device to the socket in his chest.

Of course, the Doctor was able to deduce it himself within a few seconds' time. "It just took a little energy spike to restart the reactions, right?"

"Right," Galen confirmed, without looking up. "Great thinking."

"And that huge big flash of light was actually entirely unnecessary?"

"Of course it was." Galen sat back. The device was now shining cheerfully in its proper place.

"You've got style," Jack told Galen, and re-checked Tony's pulse. "Hah, that's more like it! Come on, Mr. Stark, time to wake up!" he said, shaking Tony's shoulder.

Tony opened his eyes, saw Jack, and sighed. "I was hoping for pretty girls. Oh, well. I guess it could be worse. You're not that bad, either." He tilted his head to glance at the arc reactor. "How the hell did you manage this?"

"Oh, you know, magicians never reveal their tricks," the Doctor said.

"Magic. Yeah, right," Tony said sarcastically, and sat up straight. "Who are you people, anyway?"

"That is a very dangerous question," Galen declared solemnly.

"But a good one, too," Daniel said, sitting down next to Tony. "We should take a time-out and compare notes. See if we can puzzle this out, instead of just running around. So. I'm Doctor Daniel Jackson, archaeologist, from Earth. I work for the Stargate Program. What about you?"

"Doctor Jackson - aren't you the guy who claimed the pyramids were built by aliens?" Tony asked.

"Yes, and I was right about it, too. Aren't you the guy who went from selling weapons to saving people overnight?"

"Quite an improvement, don't you think? That's me, Tony Stark, CEO of Stark Industries, also known as Iron Man."

"From Earth, too," Daniel added.

"Where else? Mars?" Tony asked. The others exchanged glances.

Jack was sitting by Tony's other side, so he spoke up next. "Captain Jack Harkness. Torchwood. Currently from Earth. Previously from other places. Human, though."

"As am I, originally," Galen said. "Galen, technomage. Not from Earth. I've visited the place, though."

"What time period are you from?" Jack asked.

"23rd century."

"Should've known, thinking you're oh-so-advanced..."

"That's odd, really," the Doctor said thoughtfully. "I would've guessed we all share a strong link to 21st century Earth, but you break the pattern. What else do we have in common? Why are we in this mess together?"

"You didn't answer the question," Galen reminded him. "Who are you?"

"Oh, right, sorry. I'm the Doctor. Time Lord, from Gallifrey."

"He's an alien," Jack told Tony in an undertone.

"Really? You're not kidding?" Tony said. "He doesn't look like an alien. Actually, he's kind of cute."

"Uh-uh," Jack agreed. "And that's one thing about us. He's cute, Daniel's cute, too - don't you think?"

"Absolutely."

"And you're almost as gorgeous as I am."

"Hey!" Tony complained. "Anyway, what's he doing here, then?" He nodded towards Galen.

"Beauty is in the eye of the beholder, and only skin deep," Galen said, not quite managing to hide the hurt. "Besides, Anthony, there's something everyone else but you have in common. We all travel in space on a daily basis."

"Then again, you two share something, too: you both depend on technology to stay alive," the Doctor put in.

"On the other hand, you two both have an abnormal cardiovascular system," Galen riposted.

"Hm, what's wrong with yours?" Tony raised his eyebrows at the Doctor.

"Nothing! I'm an alien, remember?"

"Of course you are," Tony said, sounding more ironic than convinced.

Daniel sighed, hanging his head. "Galen was right, it wasn't a very good question after all. This is getting us nowhere. Maybe we should just keep going. Things may start making more sense if we find more people."

"Most likely we'll just find more unconscious people in need of rescuing," Jack noted, and stood up. "But rescuing people isn't a bad job at all, so let's go, the path is clear."

The path was literally clear, just like before, easy to tell apart from the rocky, sparsely vegetated ground. It seemed to be taking them directly towards the side of a mountain. As they got closer, they saw that it actually disappeared into a dark hole in the rock face, not carved like their previous exit, but uneven and rugged, a natural cave.

"I hope no one's afraid of dark, narrow spaces," the Doctor noted, and went in first. He had done this sort of thing before, after all.

He used his sonic screwdriver as a torch, and made his way forwards without paying much attention to whether the others were following or not. The first fifty feet of the passage were truly cave-like, and narrow enough that at times he had to advance sideways. After that, the walls gradually turned smooth and white, like polished marble, and the tunnel became wide, high and rectangular.

A few more steps brought him to a huge, brightly lit hall, all marble, with ornate stairways leading to openings in the walls. He couldn't actually see where all the light was coming from - as far as he could tell, there were no lamps or windows. The place somehow managed to look age-old and newly built at the same time. It felt that way, too, giving him a rather annoying feeling of time-related vertigo.

Something at the foot of one of the stairways drew his attention. It was the very centre of the time disturbance. He glanced at it - and what he saw made him freeze, the hair at the back of his neck standing up. It was a person, but there was something very, very _wrong_ about them. Even worse than Jack, and still, the Doctor couldn't look away, as much as he wanted to.

"No!" he breathed.

The others had emerged from the tunnel as well, and at the corner of his eye, the Doctor saw Jack, Daniel and Tony take in the surroundings, curious, without the slightest idea of what was going on.

Galen, on the other hand, was standing stock still and staring as well. "Oh, no," he said.

 

**II.**

Jack thought the place looked like a cross between a Greek temple and something out of a fantasy book. The fantasy element was mostly thanks to the girl, who stood at the foot of the stairway across from them. She was really pretty, her brown hair catching a golden glow where light touched it, her eyes almost as big and brown as the Doctor's. She was clad in a suit of armour - an all too tasteful one, to Jack's disappointment. Alas, no chain mail bikini here, just a full plate suit, which looked as practical as such a cumbersome thing could, barely hinting at the feminine curves hidden beneath the gleaming silvery surface. She also had a huge sword hanging at her side.

The girl smiled at them disarmingly. "Greetings, travellers," she said, her voice melodious, her tone warm and friendly.

"Don't listen to her," the Doctor hissed, staring at her with narrowed eyes. "Whatever she says, ignore it."

"Don't even look at her, if you can avoid it," Galen added, though he was gaping at her, same as everyone else.

"Please, there's no need for that. I'm a friend," she said. Her accent was curious, not quite British nor American, but something in-between, with maybe a touch of Eastern Europe.

"No, you're not. You're exactly the opposite," Galen declared.

"What're you talking about? Why're you so spooked by this handsome young lady?" Tony asked. "She's obviously not dangerous. I doubt she's even got the strength to actually lift that sword."

"She's already getting to you," the Doctor said. "You must fight it."

"Wait a moment," Daniel said slowly. "You don't mean she's a... A Mary Sue? Oh, God!"

"Worse than that," the Doctor said. "She's a blatant self-insertion."

Now, Jack could understand perfectly why the Doctor was looking so anxious. The truth was, the girl might not be attractive at all, but because of what she was, she had considerable influence over them. If they let her, she could have almost complete control.

"A badly disguised proxy of the author," Galen added, as if they didn't know the terms already.

"Avatar, if you may," the girl told them. "Damn. You really are too bright for your own good." She pouted, the expression looking so cute on her face that Jack had a hard time convincing himself it wasn't for real.

Daniel had gone pale, staring at the Avatar with a full deer in the headlights look. "No! I know you... You're - you're not just any author, you're a hurt/comfort author! She is dangerous. She's poisoned me, and tortured me, and shot me, and had a dinosaur almost eat me alive!"

"And she gave you a bioengineered version of Ebola," Galen said helpfully.

"Oh, please, don't remind me of that!" Daniel groaned.

"It could've been a decent story," Galen addressed the Avatar. "If you hadn't gone all over the top with the whump."

"Yeah, I know. I can't see why you're complaining, though. It wasn't that bad for you," she said.

"No, you just knocked me out half a dozen times. Better than a knife in the back, or having my tech completely shut down."

"So, this is what we have in common," Tony noted. "I've had a bioengineered virus, too, courtesy of her. Not to mention all the other atrocities that she's put me through, from blizzard to blazing inferno - and don't get me started on all the time I've spent in hospitals because of her..."

"Seems we've had it easy so far," Jack said, glancing at the Doctor.

"Speak for yourself. Concussions are no fun at all," the Doctor said, as much to the Avatar as to Jack.

"I've always been wondering about that, really," Tony told the Avatar conversationally. "About the fun. I mean, I can understand why people want to write porn, and I completely understand hurting someone as a plot device leading to sex - okay, I admit you've done that once or twice -"

"And there are days when I regret having written those stories, because it really didn't come naturally to me," the Avatar said, shaking her head.

"- but the sort of stuff you usually do just completely escapes me," Tony finished his sentence. "I know people get off on all sorts of weird shit, but if you're a sadist, why not go the old-fashioned latex and whips route? And if it's a medical fetish, how about some blonde nurses for a change? Might make the stuff enjoyable for us, too."

"Because it's not like that!" the Avatar exclaimed defensively.

"Come on, nothing wrong with a little S/M," Jack assured her. "So, if it's not sadism, is it some weird form of masochism, then, using us as extensions of yourself?"

"It's not that, either," she said. "It's got nothing to do with sex. It's about the drama, the angst, the heroism in the face of certain death, the ability to survive against all odds - I guess you can't understand, if you're not into h/c yourself."

"You don't even believe that yourself, do you? Everything is about sex," Tony stated. "Trust me, I'm an expert. Somewhere, deep down, on a subconscious level..."

"Let's not go there," the Doctor interrupted him hastily. "So, sticking to the conscious level, what we have here - what this story is - is like a whumper's equivalent to a PWP, right?"

"Hmm, Whump Without Plot. WWP. I could use that. This story could've been so much more, though. All the adventures we could've had here together," the Avatar said wistfully, glancing at the surroundings. "And the shock value my double-crossing would've had later on - but no, you had to be so damn smart as to see right through me, so WWP is all it's going to be."

She was eyeing the Doctor with a predatory look that Jack didn't like at all. Only now, it occurred to him that out of the five of them, the Doctor was the only one who hadn't been close to death at any point during this sad excuse of a fanfic.

"Such a pity, really. Oh, well," she said, raised her hand, and snapped her fingers.

Out of nowhere, Owen Harper appeared, standing right next to the Avatar. He was holding a pistol, aiming it directly at the Doctor. "You know I'm a bit unbalanced these days," Owen said gloomily. "Hell, I've always been unbalanced. I will shoot. You know I will."

Acting faster than thinking, Jack had already taken a step towards him and shouted "Owen, what the hell?" when he realised what was going on, that Owen was actually reliving a scene from another story, and by then, it was too late.

Owen pulled the trigger.

The echo of the gunshot hadn't even died away yet when the Avatar waved her hand, and Owen disappeared as suddenly as he had emerged.

The stunned silence couldn't have lasted for more than the fragment of a second, but it felt like an hour to Jack. Then, the Doctor groaned, and crumpled to the ground, clutching at his right side with both hands.

The cold dread that grabbed hold of Jack's gut was so painful that it was almost as if he'd been shot himself. Jack crouched to the ground by the Doctor's side, and pushed his hands away to assess the damage. It looked bad. Blood was gushing out of the gunshot wound in his chest at such a rate that his jacket front was already soaked. It seemed to be pooling on the floor underneath him as well. 

Jack wormed a hand under the Doctor's back, and, just like he had expected, found another copiously bleeding wound. He pressed a hand over both bullet holes, trying to stem the flow, even though he knew it was hopeless. He could feel the Doctor's right heart fluttering frantically between his palms - the bullet must've gone straight through it. Owen had known where to aim, and from as close a range, he'd had little chance of missing.

The Doctor coughed, sending a trickle of blood down his chin. "Aah... That's really not good," he gasped, his face contorted with pain.

"That was entirely uncalled for! What did he ever do to you?" Daniel shouted furiously, his sidearm pointed at the Avatar. He, Galen, and Tony had all gathered around her now, glaring at her murderously.

"I'm sorry, I really am, but he was always going to get hurt, badly, one way or the other. I was planning on a sword fight, actually, would've been a lot more epic," the Avatar mused. "I'm not proud to be such a freak, you know. I just can't help it. I mean, look at him, lying there, gasping for breath, his face scrunched up like that, all colour drained from it... There's just something so... So irresistible about that sort of imagery."

"You sick bitch!" Tony yelled at her. Before anyone else had time to react, he grabbed hold of Daniel's gun, pointed it at the Avatar's knees, and shot at her.

The bullet phased through her as if she wasn't there at all. "Sorry, but you can't touch me. You can only blame yourselves. The moment you figured out who and what I am and named me, I ceased to be a real, concrete part of this realm."

"Then you are as unreal to us as we are to you. Tell me, would you do something like this to someone in your reality, in that Real Life world you're always so eager to escape?" Galen asked her, his voice serious and perfectly steady.

"Of course not!" the Avatar replied instantly.

"Then look at him again, and think about this. This may be just fiction to you, but to us, it is entirely real. The Doctor's pain, Jack's fear and worry - it's not just epic angst and drama, it is _real_. It's gruesome and terrible and ugly. There is absolutely nothing 'fun' about it. To call it entertaining is nothing short of morbid."

As Galen spoke, Jack felt the Doctor's right heart stagger, and then stop. "Oh, no - no, no, no," he muttered, and moved his hand to the other side. Thank whatever gods there might be in this crazy place, the Time Lord's left heart was still beating, straining desperately to keep him alive.

"It's all right," the Doctor breathed, sounding anything but that. "Slows down the blood loss."

"But Doctor, how long can you... Will you..." Jack began, too horrified to finish the questions.

"He's not going to make it," Galen said darkly. "Not when the bullet perforated his lung as well, and when he's already lost that much blood. Put together, the trauma is too great even for a Time Lord."

"Then there's only one choice - Doctor, you're going to have to regenerate," Jack said urgently.

"Um, sorry, but he can't," the Avatar put in. "Not here. Because that would be AU, which this fic isn't."

"Not that I know what 'regenerating' means, but how's him dying here any less AU?" Tony asked.

"Oh, come on! No one's going to die. As you all know perfectly well, I don't do deathfic," the Avatar stated. "So, stop making such a fuss, and Galen, get to work. It's a simple enough wound. You can heal him."

"No." Galen crossed his arms and looked from the Avatar to the Doctor, his face emotionless and his eyes as cold as ice. "Even if I could, I refuse to take any part in your games anymore. You let us out of here, and then I can heal him."

"Sure, I promise to let you go as soon as you've made him better!"

"You expect me to trust your word after all the tricks you've played?"

"Well, obviously, I can't let you go straight away, in the middle of the fic!"

"And obviously, I can't heal him when there's no guarantee you won't just go on torturing us after that. You broke him, you can fix him yourself. And you'd better hurry up with it, he's not going to last much longer."

The Avatar let out an exasperated sigh. "If that's the way it's going to be, fine. You know, if you hadn't recognised me, this would've been a lot easier. I could've had all sorts of healing abilities. Now, I'm stuck using outside help."

She waved her hand again, and Owen reappeared. As soon as he saw the scene, he ran to Jack and fell on his knees next to him and the Doctor. "God, I'm so sorry, Jack - I wasn't going to shoot, not really, I don't know what came over me - I'm sorry," he babbled, nearly sobbing.

"It's not your fault," Jack told Owen, doing his best to sound reassuring. "If you're acting out of character, you can blame her."

Owen looked up at the Avatar, frowning. "Wait a second - I know you, don't I?"

"Oh, forget about it. You're not helping at all," the Avatar grumbled, and waved her hand once more.

Owen disappeared again, and Martha Jones materialised out of thin air - and cried out in horror. "Oh, no! Doctor!" She rushed to Jack and the Doctor, and cradled his head in her hands, tears already flowing down her face.

"Agh," the Avatar groaned. "I need action, not angst!"

She waved around to make the young doctor disappear. A tall man Jack had never seen before took her place. He had grey hair and was leaning on a cane, and his scruffy looks were surprisingly sexy.

"House!" Tony growled.

"Stark," the newcomer - House - replied, making the name sound like an insult.

"Don't get started, you two. There's no time. House, if you need anything, equipment, staff, just name it. Fix him, whatever it takes," the Avatar said, gesturing at the Doctor. She was beginning to seem slightly panicked herself.

House limped over to Jack and the Doctor, took one look at the injured Time Lord and shook his head. "What do you expect me to do? I'm a diagnostician, and I bet you already know the diagnosis. I'll give you a prognosis, too. He's a goner. Doesn't need a doctor, he needs a miracle."

"Oh, come on, you've saved people from worse situations than this!" the Avatar shouted.

House turned his back to the others and walked back to her. "In entirely different circumstances. This isn't my kind of story at all. Not that I'm surprised - you really can't write me all that well, can you? And I bet your knowledge of medicine is firmly based on wikipedia. Have you ever considered actually, realistically thinking about the consequences before you break these poor people to bits?"

As the Avatar and House began arguing, everyone else gathered around Jack and the Doctor. He was shivering, and coughing feebly, a terrible, wet, choking sound. The beats of his uninjured heart were growing alarmingly weak under Jack's palm. He stared at Jack with glazed eyes, miraculously still conscious.

"Galen, please - if there's anything you can do..." Jack pleaded. He wasn't one to beg, but now, he saw no other choice. He couldn't stand watching the Doctor just slip away like this.

"Jack, no," the Doctor croaked. "He's right. It's - the way - out."

"What, dying's the only way to escape this place?" Tony said incredulously. "We need to kill ourselves to get out?"

"I don't think that's what he meant, not exactly," Daniel said, slowly, thoughtfully.

"Just me," the Doctor mouthed with blood-tinged lips.

"Ah, right. I think I catch your drift," Tony said, nodding.

Jack still had no idea what they were going on about - all the others seemed to be super-intelligent. He was older and more experienced than everyone but the Doctor, but apparently, he wasn't quite as clever as them. He did know one thing for sure, though. "I'm not going to let him die," he declared.

"Listen, Jack," Galen said. "This place, this realm, is a very unstable construct, since there's no plot, no backstory, no point to any of this. It's just a random pocket of time and space the Avatar has created. The only thing holding it together is her imagination. Do something unimaginable - which letting the Doctor die would obviously be - and the entire structure will fall apart."

"Everything will go back to normal, as if none of this ever happened," Tony added.

"What, like someone's just... retconned the whole thing?" Jack asked. "And the Doctor will be all right?"

"In theory, at least," Daniel said, not sounding all that convincing.

"It's a risk we'll have to take," Galen stated.

"I don't - have - long - anyway," the Doctor gasped. Every shallow, shuddering breath he took sounded like it might be his last. "Jack... There's - no other - way." 

Jack swallowed thickly. "Okay," he said, his throat so tight he could barely get out that one word.

"Fine, have it your way!" the Avatar shouted at House so loudly that they all turned to look. They saw her wave him away as if he were a really annoying bug.

"A miracle, he says? Well, I can do that!" She clapped her hands together, bringing into existence a very pretty woman whose hair was glimmering both gold and silver at the same time. She was dressed like some sort of a Native American, and in her hands she held a blue crystal staff.

"Goldmoon, no," Daniel said to her. "Stay away. You can't help him."

He, Galen and Tony stood up, taking a stance between the two women and Jack and the Doctor. Daniel pointed his sidearm at the women, and Galen raised his staff menacingly in front of him.

"What the hell do you think you're doing?" the Avatar yelled, her cheeks flushed with anger. "She can heal him! He's going to die, if you don't let her! Stand aside!"

"We won't," Tony said. "We'll fight you if we have to, or anyone you'll call up against us."

"The Doctor is going to die, and it is all your fault," Galen declared with finality.

The Doctor's gasping breaths were growing more and more laboured. "Jack... I..." he rasped, his voice no louder than a whisper, his eyelids drooping. "I'm scared."

Jack was scared out of his wits, too, and he felt like he was falling into tiny pieces inside, but he couldn't let the Doctor know that. Jack cupped his face gently. "Don't worry, Doctor. It's going to be all right, I promise. You're going to save us all."

The Doctor let out a long breath, like a sigh, and closed his eyes. Jack could practically see him let go, surrender to the inevitable. He pressed a light kiss on the Doctor's forehead. His hand was still resting on the Doctor's chest, so he could feel the faint beats of his left heart come to a stop. He bent closer to give the Doctor another kiss, this one right on his bloodstained lips.

Jack looked up. Everyone was staring at the two of them, all with expressions of sorrow and pity. Tears were sliding down the Avatar's pretty face - but as her eyes met Jack's, she smiled, a smug, knowing smile. Had the goddamn bitch been planning things to go this way all along?

She winked at Jack, and the world ceased to exist.

  


**********

  


After a very shaky fifteen minutes full of smoke and sparks, the Doctor found himself lying on the grating. There was a strange taste in his mouth. He ran a finger over his lips, and stared at it. Blood. He must've split his lip or bitten his tongue when he'd hit the floor.

Slightly shaky, he staggered to his feet. He had the weirdest feeling that someone had knocked the wind out of him with something really sharp. Nothing broken, though. Not even bruised. As far as he could tell, he was perfectly unharmed, except for his pride.

What could've got into the TARDIS to make her act up like that? He made his way to the console and checked the readings. Everything seemed normal. The position read Naples, June 1889, just like he'd wanted. Pizza! Molto bene!

He spotted the psychic paper resting against a switch. Weird. He picked it up. Oddly enough, the writing on it was crimson. At first, he thought it was lipstick. Only later did he come to realise that it was actually blood. Time Lord blood. His own. The text read,
    
    
      _"Until next time! ;-) <3"_
    

**Author's Note:**

> My older stories referred to in this fic include:
> 
> _"It could've been a decent story," Galen addressed the Avatar. "If you hadn't gone all over the top with the whump."_  
>  _"Yeah, I know. I can't see why you're complaining, though. It wasn't that bad for you," she said._  
>  _"No, you just knocked me out half a dozen times. Better than a knife in the back, or having my tech completely shut down."_  
>  \- [To Live and Die as One](http://archiveofourown.org/works/3956887)
> 
> _Daniel had gone pale, staring at the Avatar with a full deer in the headlights look. "No! I know you... You're - you're not just any author, you're a hurt/comfort author! She is dangerous. She's poisoned me, and tortured me, and shot me, and had a dinosaur almost eat me alive!"_  
>  _"And she gave you a bioengineered version of Ebola," Galen said helpfully._  
>  \- [The DinoGate series](http://archiveofourown.org/series/258880) and [Dodecagon](http://archiveofourown.org/works/3964369)
> 
> _"So, this is what we have in common," Tony noted. "I've had a bioengineered virus, too, courtesy of her. Not to mention all the other atrocities that she's put me through, from blizzard to blazing inferno - and don't get me started on all the time I've spent in hospitals because of her..."_  
>  \- [Iron & Irony](http://archiveofourown.org/works/3970423/chapters/8906965), [Cryobiosis](http://archiveofourown.org/works/3954775), [Thermobiosis](http://archiveofourown.org/works/3955078)
> 
> _"Speak for yourself. Concussions are no fun at all," the Doctor said, as much to the Avatar as to Jack._  
>  \- [Hollow World](http://archiveofourown.org/works/3963586/chapters/8889631)
> 
> _Out of nowhere, Owen Harper appeared, standing right next to the Avatar. He was holding a pistol, aiming it directly at the Doctor. "You know I'm a bit unbalanced these days," Owen said gloomily. "Hell, I've always been unbalanced. I will shoot. You know I will."_  
>  \- [Future-Perfect-in-Past](http://archiveofourown.org/works/3956944)
> 
> _She clapped her hands together, bringing into existence a very pretty woman whose hair was glimmering both gold and silver at the same time. She was dressed like some sort of a Native American, and in her hands she held a blue crystal staff._  
>  \- [DragonGate](http://archiveofourown.org/works/3956818)


End file.
